The Morning After The Night Before
by monkey-in-hell
Summary: One-shot. Er... Over two chapters.
1. Chapter 1

The Morning After

She wasn't sure what had woken her. It could have been the drill rattling through her head or it could have been the raging thirst - her tongue felt as though she'd spent the previous night licking wine off that God-awful rug next to her sofa rather than from a glass. Sadly, neither was an unfamiliar sensation. Feeling trapped, because there didn't seem to be any way out for her, it had become so very easy to find some solace in the bottom of a bottle. But she felt exceptionally rough this morning; a brief attempt at calculating exactly how much she had consumed the previous night failed miserably due to the unnerving blanks in her memory.

She thought about opening her eyes, about facing the world; her mouth was begging for a drop of water but her head absolutely refused to let her move an inch, arguing that as it was the weekend she could lie there a bit longer. She was content to let her head win for now; trying to sleep the worst of this off wasn't such a bad idea. It was possibly too late for a New Year's resolution, and she might have said it before, but this time, she resolved, she meant it: she would never drink again. It wasn't worth the brief escape it offered. She gently manoeuvred her head on what felt like the most uncomfortable pillow imaginable (kudos to her psyche for that one), trying to find a suitable position to recapture sleep, when an image flashed through her muddled mind.

_"Oooh, Vienna!" she crooned, only slightly out of tune, and rather loudly. Around her a sea of faces were smiling directly at her though she was too drunk to wonder if they were smiling with her or at her. And right then, standing on a chair in Luigi's snug restaurant, the wall with the mural supporting her, she didn't care either._

She groaned at the memory; if this was all in her head why couldn't she give herself the ability to sing in tune? Not for the first time, and with the benefit of both hindsight and a dusting of embarrassment, she wondered why she continued to drink with her colleagues. It was an action that she liked to justify by proximity alone (the lack of distance required to stumble home to bed was a huge positive) but the truth was blindingly obvious: she had no one else in this world. Shaz, Chris, even Ray - they were all she had. Them and Gene. She groaned again as the memory expanded; Chris, Shaz and the rest of CID were still egging her on - she couldn't remember how the song had come to be played - but Gene had merely sat there stoney faced, his dissatisfaction evident. She groaned once more at the thought of seeing him again after last night. A situation she had been in before and such encounters never went well.

_"It means nothing to me. This means nothing to me!" she shouted, the words meaning more than the tune. Somewhere in her fuzzy head it had seemed as if those two lines had been written just for her, to be the slogan for her long running campaign against whatever powers had placed her here. A 'screw you' statement. But only Gene seemed to be listening._

There'd been a point in her journey through this world, not long after her parents had died and when she'd first come to suspect that this was it for her, when she'd wondered if Gene was something... more. More than a construct of her damaged mind. More than a temperamental player in this little theatrical production of hers. She'd tried, maybe half-heartedly in retrospect, to find out exactly who he was, to prise him open just a little and see what really lay beneath that long, dark coat but he hadn't given very much away besides the usual name, rank, and potted history. As if he was like everybody else here and therefore nothing more than the product of a few of her more rampant brain cells.

_"Don't you think you've had enough to drink?"_

_The question was one of those queries that didn't really require an answer. It was more of an unspoken demand to stop and coming from him it only encouraged her to carry on. "Absolutely not." She wasn't sure if the words had come out right; they'd sounded okay to her but now he was looking at her strangely and not because she'd just defiantly disobeyed him. Well, the Gene on the right was; his twin on the left was more of a blur to her._

She refused to confront the issue of her drinking. The only problem she had was being stuck here. Besides, it was all fake so what did it really matter if, every now and then, she got well and truly drunk? Drunk enough to forget everything. Drunk enough to chase away the pain. She sighed into her pillow, feeling her resolve crumble already. Even if her hangovers, which always seemed to burrow through a spot just above her eye, like a bullet to the head, weren't real they were significant. She couldn't ignore their choice of location or growing intensity. She'd tried to convince herself that they were merely the result of drinking far too much and had absolutely nothing to do with her slowly dying back in the real world but the headache, that dull pain above her eye, never truly disappeared. It lingered on, a constant reminder of her mortality.

_"Stay, Gene." The words slipped easily out of her wine soaked throat and over her drink-loosened tongue - they always did. When she was sober there were always so many logical, practical, and intellectual reasons not to say those words. When she was drunk they never seemed so important. When she was drunk it was so much easier to follow her heart. _

_"Whatever you want, Alex." _

Her heart fluttered at the memory, the sensation raising her above all others. Just for a moment the idea that he had stayed with her felt like the most wonderful thing in this world. Then it disappeared into the darkness of her mind to be chewed up and spat out: he never stayed. He would take her to bed but never in the way she hoped he would. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she moved her free arm behind her back, keeping her eyes shut and holding her breath as she did so. That glimmer of hope urged her on but under her fingers she felt only cool, empty sheets and the strong pang of disappointment.


	2. Chapter 2

The Night Before

Despite all of her protestations to the contrary her eyelids fluttered shut almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. With a resigned sigh he set about adjusting the covers around her, gingerly moving her when required to so he could complete the task - though he needn't have worried so much, she was dead to the world. A hand on either side of her, the job done, he paused for a moment and studied her face closely. In sleep she looked so much more peaceful, as if whatever had been bothering her all these months, whatever she was drinking to forget or to escape, had simply abandoned her.

_"Stay, Gene."_

_She whispered the words slowly though he suspected that had more to do with the amount she'd imbibed than anything more meaningful. It usually did. But, by God, he wanted to stay. He was tired. Of all this. Of being there for her but never being with her. "Whatever you want, Alex," he agreed, catching her as she smiled sleepily against his shoulder. Almost as if she really did want him to stay. _

It would be so easy just to slip in beside her, pull the covers over them both and hold on to her for as long as he could but, come the morning, no matter what had or hadn't happened, he was realistic enough to know that she wouldn't really want him there. It was only the drink talking. It was always the drink with her, at least in that respect; the one time he had broached the 'subject' with her when she wasn't drunk, she had turned him down and his pride stubbornly refused to let him try again. With that painful thought he started to move away but she murmured something incomprehensible before turning between his outstretched arms, her head now facing him. In a split second he both struggled with a long suppressed urge and gave in to it. Leaning down he slowly and gently brushed his lips against her own, stealing a kiss that he felt she would never let him take in any other situation.

_"Don't you think you've had enough," he said evenly, knowing what her response would be but hoping that, for once, she would relent._

_"Absolutely not," she slurred at him, his heart sinking at both the sight and the sound of her. She'd worked her way through at least two bottles of house rubbish but he wasn't sure about the rest. The way she was attempting to focus her eyes on him suggested it might have been more. Time to escort her upstairs. Again. He couldn't leave her like that, not in that state - it was a lesson he'd learnt a long time ago even if she hadn't._

He stood straight, the taste of her still on his lips but his eyes - and his heart - ached. Just over a week into the New Year and she seemed intent on carrying it on in much the same vein that she'd finished off the old year and he was unsure what to do about it. About her. He'd tried talking to her. He'd tried - God help him - reasoning with her. In absolute frustration and blind anger, with a healthy side serving of worry, he'd tried shouting at her. None of it had worked and he'd resigned himself to looking out for her, just as he'd always done. Only now he wasn't trying to save her life; it felt as though he was trying to save her.

_"It means nothing to me. This means nothing to me!"_

_He inwardly cringed at the words and the venom behind them. When Chris had produced the cassette she'd begged him to play that damn song, seemingly for the purpose of bellowing out those two lines - and they cut right through him. Maybe if he'd had a bit more to drink he'd find her antics as amusing as the rest of CID did but he'd cut back tonight; he always did when he sensed that this was going to happen - one of them had to stay relatively sober in these situations. If he was as drunk as her he might not be able to resist._

He could pinpoint the beginning of all this to late October; that was when she had changed, that was when she had started to drink more and more frequently. It wasn't every night, certainly not in the beginning and not quite yet either, but it was increasing. Somehow it wasn't quite enough to interfere with her work; she still stood head and shoulders above the rest of CID when distracted by a hangover, even if her heart didn't seem to be in it anymore - and her heart didn't seem to be in a lot of things lately, certainly not him. But he was concerned all the same. He was aware of the hypocrisy of the situation, and it was a point she would always make in her own defence, but he feared that watching her slowly self-destruct would, in the end, only destroy him too.

He closed the door to, not quite shutting it completely, and headed into her kitchen where, just minutes earlier, she had asked him to stay. At this point in the night he would usually leave her alone, skulking off home to hit the bottle of whiskey he kept there for just these occasions. But tonight he stood there quietly for a moment or two, his resolve slipping slightly. He had tried everything he could to help her except for the one thing he couldn't quite bring himself to do: be honest with her. There'd been one night a couple of months ago, before all of this had started, when she'd cornered him in Luigi's. They'd talked for some time, a conversation much deeper than usual and one littered with probing questions about his world, but he'd been reluctant to tell her the truth, to let her in. She'd started to slide away from him not long after that and he had an awful feeling that he was going to lose her without ever having her. But could he tell her everything? Could he really risk everything for her? And would it even be enough? With one last lingering glance at her bedroom door he slowly made his way out of her flat.


End file.
